Richard Gilbert
This calendar project responded to the work of Hereford artist, Lady Mary Rennell (1901-81) who lived at The Rodd. In 1967-68, Rennell painted an epic panorama in Chinese ink, ‘Round the year from Stonewall Hill’, which was acquired by the National Library of Wales. Stonewall Hill lies on the border of England and Wales, north of Presteigne. In response to Rennell’s work, and Chinese painters of the Northern Song Dynasty, fifty years later I created two calendar cycles of paintings about the same Stonewall Hill landscape during the pandemic lockdown. They were exhibited alongside Rennell’s panorama in Hereford Museum and Art Gallery in 2021. The larger cycle formed an installation of twelve canvases over 13 metres long surveying 360 degrees as seen from the Stonewall Hill staged over twelve months, commencing clockwise with January looking north towards Reeve’s Hill. Each composition is a pictorial invention that uses multiple viewpoints, a perspective scheme borrowed from the Chinese, as well as landmark features including distant hills. The whole is intended to capture the ebb and flow of colour and light, varying through the seasons and the rhythm of the earth.